A selection of weekly articles by top Bahamian commentators.

February 03, 2016

It’s true. Monty Knowles did it in my office the other day - rising from his chair in a crossed-leg, feet-on-thighs, mid-air lotus position. Awestruck, and knowing he also had an interest in the martial arts, I asked if he was a black belt yoga expert.

"I would get crucified with a reference like that about yoga,” he laughed from above my chair. "But I have been visiting and practicing yoga at the retreat on Paradise Island since my mid-teens.”

Now 48, Monty is going through a mid-life crisis - the kind we would all like to go through. And he wasn’t in my office to meditate. He was there to show me a book. A thick, slick, 223-page, gorgeously illustrated, coffee table hardcover titled “Monty Knowles’ Painted Nymphes”.

February 26, 2014

Google 'downtown redevelopment’ and you will find zillions of web pages focusing on one city after another - from Miami to Manhattan to Toronto and almost every place in between. Even Las Vegas has a downtown revitalisation programme, although the city was originally just a cattle ranch and wasn't incorporated until the 1900s.

This phenomenon came about due to major changes in urban environments over the past 60-odd years - office and retail activity today is much more dispersed than in earlier times. But despite their precipitous decline, town centres still form an important part of a community’s identity, for one reason or another. Revitalisation programmes are an effort to rebalance the urban economy and stem the loss of historic districts.

We can clearly see the problem right here on New Providence. The city of Nassau (not just the statutory limits) stretches from Bay Street to Wulff Road and from the Eastern Parade to Nassau Street, just beyond the long-vanished Western Parade. It's decline as a thriving city centre has been attributed to the removal of the public market from downtown, the construction of outlying shopping malls, and a population shift to residential suburbs.

Cynics have also laid much of the blame on the long-running political vendetta between a predominantly black government and the mostly white merchant princes who once held sway over Bay Street. But that is a gross distortion of the current reality, which is perhaps best characterised by the Finlayson family's ownership of Solomon's Mines.

December 03, 2013

Usually, you can’t find songwriter Eric Minns anywhere in Nassau, the town of his birth. So you might legitimately expect him to be either in Freeport or in jail - but you would be wrong.

Minns, now a spritely 83-year-old, actually spends most of his time in the wilds of Ontario - where he has lived since 1950, the last 36 years with his third Canadian wife, Laura, a retired schoolteacher. They visit Nassau every Christmas, and usually drop by my office for a chat.

“We fly back to Canada on New Year’s Eve because nobody is travelling then,” Minns explains with cheerful Canadian logic. “So it’s the best time to get a deal on an airline ticket. Plus, after New Year’s there ain’t nothing happening in Nassau anyway.”

As a cancer survivor, Minns doesn’t do much partying himself these days. But he remembers when he did. At the drop of a hat he will pull out a slew of photo albums to prove it - images of himself hamming it up with the likes of King Eric Gibson, Charles Carter, Hubert Ingraham, Perry Christie and other notables going back decades.

October 14, 2013

Counterfactual history is an attempt to answer hypothetical questions by considering what would have happened if certain key historical events had not occurred. Such speculation has spawned an entire book genre, which seeks to understand the relative importance of the event in question.

Science fiction writers are very fond of counterfactual themes, but serious historians have also been unable to resist the temptation to ask 'what if?' In 1931, for example, Winston Churchill contributed to an anthology called If It Had Happened Otherwise. His essay examined the course of events if Robert E. Lee had won the Battle of Gettysburg in the American Civil War.

Julian Granberry, the veteran Florida anthropologist and linguist who contributed decades of scholarship on the extinct Lucayan Taino inhabitants of the Bahamian archipelago, has produced his own alternate history titled The Americas That Might Have Been: "a book I expect practically everyone to find some fault with" as he says in the preface. "My hope is that everyone will also find a great deal that is new, interesting and useful."

In this 2005 work, Granberry attempts to answer the question: What would the Americas be like today—politically, economically, culturally—if Columbus and the Europeans had never found them, and how would these American peoples interact with the world's other societies?

It assumes that Columbus did not embark from Spain in 1492 and that no Europeans found or settled the New World afterward, leaving the peoples of the two American continents free to follow the natural course of their native lives.

May 29, 2013

People are more and more depressed at our skyrocketing crime rate and deepening level of moral depravity. One can sense a growing hopelessness because of the poor economic climate combined with the absence of any serious efforts at social reform or renewal by credible leaders.

But looking around this depressed landscape, with people crying hysterically on almost every street corner, you would never believe that the causes and progress of the country's social breakdown have been fully documented over the past 30-odd years by a series of special reports commissioned by the government.

They have included the 1984 commission of inquiry into drug smuggling and the task force on drug abuse, the 1994 task force on education and the consultative committee on youth development, and the 1998 national crime commission.

What did that last report conclude? Well, the commissioners (a judge, a psychiatrist, a criminologist, social workers and clergymen) warned that Bahamian society was threatened by "a pervasive culture of dishonesty, greed and a casual disregard for social norms and regulation."

November 06, 2012

For the past three general elections Michael Pintard and David Wallace have put together sketch comedies lampooning the key personalities and issues in the campaigns. These side-splitting performances have played to sold-out audiences in Nassau and Freeport.

The current version is called Election 2012: What Just Happened? It explores the events and issues surrounding the most recent campaign, and effectively impersonates leading members of the PLP, the FNM and the DNA.

Pintard, the losing FNM candidate for Cat Island, San Salvador & Rum Cay in the last election, took some barbs himself. For example, recalling an actual stump speech, David Wallace (the Hubert Ingraham impersonator) declared dramatically "Pintard, I'm sending you on a mission! Only it's a one-way mission, heh, heh."

Christie ("who had the shuffle kicked out of him in 2007"), was brilliantly impersonated by Will Stubbs. It's relatively easy to imitate HAI because of his speech impediment and the fact that he actually has a sense of humour. But it's a rather more complex task to attempt the same with Christie. Nevertheless, Stubbs managed to pull it off brilliantly.

Meanwhile, the unfortunate Bran McCartney, impersonated by Tawari Rodgers, was only a bit player, which belied the DNA's key role in Ingraham's demise.

Both Wallace and Pintard are losing FNM candidates (although Wallace won West End and Bimini in the 1997 FNM wipeout of the PLP). Pintard, who lost in May by only 85 votes to now Deputy Prime Minister Philip Davis, conceded that the play had been delayed this election cycle because it had taken him longer to heal.

Arguably, the star of the show was Marquita Whymns, who (among other characters) portrayed the archetypal Haitian-Bahamian matriarch, Marie, cleverly massaging both Obie Wilcombe and Pakeshia Edgecombe. After assuring both Grand Bahama candidates of unswerving loyalty, she turned to her dissolute Bahamian husband and declared "We deliver same as repatriate".

The three-hour performance on Saturday (at the so-called National Centre for the Performing Arts) was sold out and the audience appeared hugely entertained by even the most banal jokes. The opening scene - featuring the "roads dem, dig up, dig up" - proved especially energising.

Aside from a few technical difficulties, like delayed musical prompts and a non-functioning stage curtain, the performance is well worth the $25 ticket price. Extra shows are being scheduled for this Thursday, Friday and Saturday, so you still have a chance to get in on the action.

October 29, 2012

The kick-off event of the 40th independence anniversary was announced recently at the Cabinet Office. It was a bumbling and incoherent affair provoking many questions while providing few considered answers.

Two days later, Prime Minister David Cameron announced plans for the centenary commemoration of World War I by the United Kingdom. What a study in contrast between the envisioning and planning of the two commemorations by the respective heads of government and policymakers.

In a carefully-crafted address at the Imperial War Museum, the transcript of which is available at 10 Downing Street’s website, Cameron articulated the vision and values intended to guide the commemoration.

Characteristically, Prime Minister Christie has failed to do likewise on at least two occasions. He failed to do so at the announcement of the committee spearheading our 40th. He failed again at last week’s announcement of the renaming of the newer Paradise Island Bridge in honour of Sir Sidney Poitier, and related activities.

April 13, 2012

Edmund Moxey’s contribution to the social, cultural, economic and political advancement of Bahamians found magnificent expression in Jumbey Village. The new documentary on the creation and destruction of Jumbey Village chronicles some of our post-independence history.

Some of the dreams of Ed Moxey became manifest. Still, many of his dreams were deferred, like a raisin in the sun, calling to mind the memorable poem by Langston Hughes. In his book-length poem suite, Montage of a Dream Deferred, Hughes asks in, What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore-- And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over-- like a syrupy sweet?Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.

December 09, 2011

There is still at 94 both an irrepressible humour and twinkle in the eyes of Sir Durward Knowles. They are permanent features of his exuberant spirit and dedication to squeezing out of life every measure of joy.

The title of Sir Durward’s biography is Driven by the Stars. He has been driven by a constellation of lodestars and virtues, among them extraordinary generosity, sportsmanship and a passion for national unity. In turn, he has become a guiding star for others.

Quite a bit has been written about Sir Durward’s contribution to sports and his exemplary philanthropy particularly in the areas of physical and mental disability. Athletic prowess and disability may seem incongruent, but not to Sir Durward.

In both areas the champion athlete and champion of the disabled has sought to empower others, no matter their physical or mental capacity or disability, to be driven by their own stars, overcoming limits to achieve more than one ever dared imagine.

October 18, 2011

We Bahamians are considered such philistines around the region. They laugh at us for stooping so low as to blow up our own culture, and that's not a joke - it actually happened in 1987, when the government demolished Jumbey Village with explosives.

The village was an offshoot of a community festival launched in 1969 by musician and parliamentarian Ed Moxey. An earlier and more 'cultural' version of the fish fry, it featured music and dance performances as well as displays of arts and crafts, and produce, and was aimed at locals as well as tourists.

In 1971 Moxey persuaded the Pindling government to let the festival take over a former dump site on Blue Hill Road and build a permanent facility. In the period leading up to independence in 1973, there was a lot of buzz about a popular enterprise promoting Bahamian creative arts.

"We put the homestead site up and in '73 we had a meeting with all the teachers. And they agreed right there that all the teachers in the system would donate a half day's pay and every school would have a function...and we came up with $100,000 in the space of three months," Moxey recalled.

"We put up a special cabinet paper, cabinet agreed, and when I pick up the budget, everything was cut out. Everything." Moxey told University of Pennsylvania researcher Tim Rommen in 2007. "That was a little bit too much. Village lingered, lingered...just kept on deteriorating until they came up with this grandiose scheme to put National Insurance there. And when they ready, they blow the whole thing down."